N.B.: I am uploading the videos from last weekend as we speak but getting “unknown errors” from YouTube. Video links coming as soon as I can get them working.
Just finished watching a couple of heats’ worth of video of us from the Carolina Fall Classic last weekend. Good news: we do not look as bad as I feared we might. In particular, I do not look as lumpy and saggy in my JulioJulio dress as one unlucky still photo from Baton Rouge had led me to believe. More good news: neither of our kamikaze-style Viennese Waltz attempts was captured on video.
Now for the bad news. Looking at these videos, I can see why we didn’t get good marks. Our routines are interesting, but our fundamentals aren’t good:
- Footwork is steppy and tentative instead of smooth and strong.
- Posture is bad–Daniel’s forehead is way up by my ear.
- Contact isn’t consistent in hold–in one shot you can clearly see daylight between our hip bones.
- Transitions in & out of hold are sloppy.
- I’m dancing into the floor rather than across it–my steps look stompy.
- We are not aggressive enough and therefore not covering floor as we should.
- Tango is too bouncy.
- Foxtrot is not bouncy enough.
- I was so glad we got the choreography right that I didn’t even notice rise & fall in waltz, which probably means it wasn’t there.
- Relatedly, we are failing to use our knees in any of the dances.
- We are clearly neither dancing our routines smoothly as written nor improvising believably.
Adequate practice–the one thing we haven’t had in the past–is the only cure.